Sunday, April 15, 2007

This morning I watched Meet the Press on MSNBC, This Week on ABC and Fox News Sunday. All three had segments on Imus.

I offer these segments as examples of why the "main stream media" is main stream and Fox is a pretender.

Meet the Press and This Week had discussions with differences of opinion that added insight and thought into the debate that is much larger than the comment by Don Imus. Chis Wallace on Fox tried to play "gotcha" journalism with Reverend Al Sharpton and then Bill Kristol gushed over how the incident skewered liberals.

I'm afraid that Don Imus and Fox prove if you pander to people's prejudices you'll always have an audience.

Retired General Anthony Zinni was on Meet the Press this morning. He said something that while not new, made me think about the future of the Iraq War.

He disagreed with the current approach and he also disagreed with proposals by the Democrats for time tables for withdrawal. What he pointed out was that neither incorporated a strategic plan for the Middle East. The way he presented this made a lot of sense.

I think his idea is close to the call for a Regional Security Summit, but not just as some part of a withdrawal. He is suggesting that we look beyond how we extricate ourselves from Iraq to what is our plan for the Middle East?

One of the reasons given for going into Iraq was that a democratic Iraq would awaken a desire for democracy in the region. While rather simplistic and naive, it was at least the start of a strategy. What is our strategy now?

No matter what they call it, Republicans cling to the "stay the course" policy. Democrats, in response to public pressure and the stupendous incompetency and lack of planning by the administration, have adopted an equally short sighted approach, withdraw. Neither talks a lot about what happens next. How does your plan for Iraq fit into the larger goal to stabilize the Middle East and counter terrorism?

This is a complicated problem and we need better answers from both parties.

Retired General Anthony Zinni was one of Tim Russert's guests on Meet the Press this morning. He said several interesting things.

He suggested that U.S. Presidents should be limited to one six year term. Once elected they should become "elder statesman". I think the idea is, they would remove themselves from partisan political debates. General Zinni was dismayed that more people knew the name of the White House Political officer (Karl Rove) than knew the name of the National Security Advisor (Stephen Hadley).

This was a theme echoed by Torie Clarke on This Week on ABC which generated a small discussion about the amount of partisan politics being pursued inside the White House.

The President lives in a world of politics so a political advisor will aways be needed to help garner political support for the President's policies, but is having a PARTISAN political advisor intimately involved in every decision in the best interests of the entire country? Why should the number one partisan political advisor have an office in the White House? And this certainly applies whether the President is a Republican or a Democrat.

One of the reasons this came up was the missing emails that might document Karl Rove's involvement in the recent firing of several U.S. Prosecutors. From this investigation we found out that at least some White House officials were given email accounts on the Republican National Committee's email server. The idea was that the government should not be paying for partisan communications. Of course, it also allowed this communication, where one end was in the White House, from being subject to retention and disclosure laws that apply to White House emails. I'm with Torie Clarke (if I correctly understood her position), if you work in the White House, any communications that take place there fall under the rules of the White House.

A President is elected and then spends 8 years trying to get re-elected. When he (or maybe someday, she) isn't working on their own re-election they are trying to elect or re-elect members of their party. I don't see how that can be good for the country.

I don't know how a President decides when to pursue policies that are best for the country and when to pursue policies that are best for his political party, but it has to make his decision making process more difficult. I think that would make an interesting question for our Presidential candidates. I doubt you would get an honest answer out of any of them, so the best answer will be the one with the least BS.

Six years seems like a long time for a single term, but people tend to re-elect a President. Six years doesn't sound too bad when you realize that Richard Nixon and George W. Bush, as bad as they were and are, were reelected.

How about a six year term with a referendum at the three year mark? There would be no opponent, just a vote as to whether the President will get three more years or would face a full election the during the fourth year.